Editorials 210 In March 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) released a report 1 on the status of water and sanitation in health-care facilities from 54 low-and middle-income countries. Data representing 66 000 health facilities show that water was not readily available in about 40%. 1 Over a third of facilities lacked soap for hand washing a...

As at March 31, 2014, the regional health authorities (RHAs) administered 41 facilities with 2,788 long-term care beds available. Of these 41 facilities, 25 are publicly-operated long-term care facilities which provide residential care and accommodations to 2,390 long-term care residents who have high care needs and require on-site services. The remaining 398 long-term care residents are cared ...

OBJECTIVES Many adolescents admitted to detention facilities have serious mental and physical health problems. Little is known about policies for the delivery of mental and physical health care in these settings. Our objective was to describe current health care policies in U.S. detention facilities. METHOD Telephone interviews were requested from 83 juvenile detention facility administrators...

BACKGROUND Availability and affordability of medicines are key determinants of universal health coverage, yet achieving them presents a major challenge especially in low-income countries. We here present an analysis of availability and prices of antimalarial and antibiotic medicines in public, faith-based and private health facilities in Malawi. Medicines are provided free of charge in the publ...

BACKGROUND Despite improvements in a number of health outcome indicators partly due to the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Ghana is unlikely to attain all its health-related millennium development goals before the end of 2015. Inefficient use of available limited resources has been cited as a contributory factor for this predicament. This study sought to explore efficiency levels of NH...

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE Client characterization is an important step in evaluating the services offered by campus counseling and mental health centers and in their further planning and development. The objectives here were to describe reported complaints and demographics among students who sought counseling/mental healthcare at a Brazilian campus mental health service over a 17-year period and to...

BACKGROUND The older adult population is increasing all over the world. In sub-Saharan Africa, due to poverty and low policy coverage, older adults are not well catered for. The effect of socio-economic inequality in the use of healthcare services among older adult men and women in Ghana was investigated in this paper. METHODS The data employed in the study were drawn from Global Ageing and A...

BACKGROUND Specialist physicians require clinical information for patient visits in ambulatory encounters, some of which they may access via digital health solutions. OBJECTIVE This study explored the completeness of information for patient care and the consequences of gaps for ambulatory specialist services provided in ambulatory settings in Canada. METHODS A sample of specialist physician...

BACKGROUND Women's preference to give birth at home is deeply embedded in Ethiopian culture. Many women only go to health facilities if they have complications during birth. Health Extension Workers (HEWs) have been deployed to improve the utilization of maternal health services by bridging the gap between communities and health facilities. This study examined the barriers and facilitators for ...